The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
In a typical welding gun, and more specifically a MIG welding gun, a conductor tube is secured to the end of a welding gun handle and generally functions to conduct gas and provide a conduit for feeding welding wire from a supply device (e.g., wire feeder) to the end of the conductor tube. The welding wire is fed through an assembly of consumable components that are secured to the end of the conductor tube, including a diffuser, a contact tip, and a nozzle. Generally, the diffuser distributes a shield gas within the nozzle and around the welding wire to provide a shielded weld zone, the contact tip guides the welding wire through to the weld zone and also conducts current to the welding wire, and the nozzle houses the consumable components, delivers the shielding gas, and shields the other consumable components from weld spatter. Operation of a typical MIG welding gun, by way of example, is shown and described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,491,321 and 5,338,917, which are commonly owned with the present application, and the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Conductor tubes are generally provided in a variety of shapes and sizes depending on the welding operation/environment. For example, most conductor tubes are angled, or define a bend, and others define a generally straight shape. Depending on the welding environment, an operator often needs to adjust the length or the angle of the conductor tube. One way of achieving this adjustment is to physically remove the conductor tube, which is most often secured to a welding gun handle with an Allen screw, and replace it with another conductor tube having the desired length and/or bend angle. To reduce this frequency of changing the conductor tube, and thus overall downtime, some known welding guns provide a flexible conductor tube by winding a number of copper wires around a cable assembly. However, these flexible conductors present certain drawbacks. First of all, the copper wires cannot withstand repeated flexing over an extended period of time and often deform or break only after a few days of operation. Secondly, the unlimited degrees of freedom of rotation provided by the copper wires often causes wire feed problems inside the conductor tube when the tube is repeatedly flexed, especially at extreme angles, over an extended period of time.
During use, weld splatter often accumulates onto the exterior surface of the nozzle and a typical operator will tap or hit the end of the nozzle against a hard surface to knock off the splatter if the accumulation begins to affect the quality of the weld. As such, the conductor tube, and often the consumable components, undergo premature failure, and wire feed problems can occur from knocking off the splatter in this manner. Additionally, the position of the conductor tube is often changed when the end of the nozzle is tapped or hit against the hard surface, which causes the operator to interrupt a welding operation to reposition the conductor tube, thus contributing to increased downtime.